


The Legacy of Babylon

by thealphagate_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-28
Updated: 2006-03-28
Packaged: 2019-02-02 02:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12717693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thealphagate_archivist/pseuds/thealphagate_archivist
Summary: Jack and Daniel listen.





	The Legacy of Babylon

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

The room was all shades of grey and shadowed blue, streaked by the thin, washed-out light from the street outside. He wasn't sure what had woken him, for everything was quiet. The only sounds were the soft buzz and clatter of the fridge and the slightly adenoidal hum of Daniel's breathing. He should have been sleeping; it'd been a helluva day, to say the least, but he was awake and he was listening and he was hearing Daniel breathing and somehow that just seemed more important. Perhaps the most important thing in the world, to lie there and listen.

Most people didn't believe that Jack O'Neill listened, but that wasn't true. He listened all the time. He was just damn choosy about what he said back, and sometimes, he didn't know what _to_ say. Sara, case in point. But he listened, and he carried it around inside of him, and it shaped him, wore him down like wind and rain on limestone. Sometimes he felt like he was less than he had been, but other times...he felt like he was so much more.

Right now, right here, was one of those times that he was both.

_"I can't leave him like this. And I won't."_

And he hadn't. Daniel had spoken, Jack had listened, and he had heard everything in between the words, had seen them unfold and fly out like paper cranes, like fractals, like roads to faraway stars. Small, simple words that opened worlds. One breath, an event horizon.

Strange that when he had hardly any words left at all, they all seemed to be love.

Later, head in his hands and half asleep at Daniel's desk with his brain aching, he'd listened to Daniel's chatter, clung to it like a lifeline. Daniel he understood best of all, like he heard the man with more than his ears and his head, like he heard with his heart. The rapid-fire, staccato running commentary on everything and nothing at once, the breathless "ahs" and half-breath hesitations. Most people assumed Daniel made those because he was questioning their intelligence.

Jack had long since figured out it was mostly because Daniel was questioning his own. 

He understood the rushing, the blather. Daniel was afraid. Exhilarated, yes, and hopeful and a little god-smacked, but still afraid beneath it all. Jack was Pandora's box, with all the answers wrapped up in his brain, but at what price? Jack laid his head on the blotter, felt something press into his cheek and didn't really give a damn, just closed his eyes and let Daniel's words tether him.

He woke a while later, felt the heat of Daniel standing silent over him, felt his hand hovering over the nape of his neck. Felt the tentative touch, almost a pet or a pat or a stroke. The awkward touch of one who has not been touched himself, not much at least, not for a while. 

He opened his eyes, glanced up and saw Daniel, his face naked and drawn into lines of fear and exhaustion. Something there he wasn't telling Jack. Something Jack didn't have the words to ask.

"The tower of Babel," Daniel said suddenly, moving away, rifling through books in a make-work sort of way. "It was probably an allegory for Nebuchadnezzar's great ziggurat in Babylon, but, ah ... well, they say men tried to build a tower to heaven, once, and in his wrath Jehovah struck it down, and when they awoke they all spoke different languages, couldn't communicate with each other and so could never attempt such an undertaking again. It was their punishment, to be always separated by the distance of words that could no longer be bridges between them, only ever walls. But..." and his hand clenched, almost painfully, on the spine of some poor, helpless book, his voice tight and low and it was a bridge, not wall; it was a whole goddamned world, "...but that's just shit, Jack, because I can still hear you. I still hear you," he said. "I promise." He turned and he looked at Jack and the words were there, and everything beneath them, everything that meant anything at all.

It broke him and remade him and he didn't have words, but he reached out, let his hand brush fleetingly over Daniel's on the book, and it was enough.

* * *

After Sam and Teal'c came back things started to grow dim. Words lost their shape and form; everything became drowned out in the rush and din of knowing that clamoured in his ears. The only reference points he had left, that made any sort of sense, were the promising curve and gleam of the gate and the soft, concerned pitch of Daniel's voice. Daniel, who despite everything, still seemed to hear him. To see him in the centre of all the confusion. To know him.

When he returned, the babble gone, the drowning rush of it washed away and he was left stripped and clean, the first face he found was Daniel's. He'd expected...he hadn't expected, actually, and so was all the more surprised to find something. It. He could still _see_ Daniel, recognize him. There was no hiding anymore, perhaps not ever again. 

It terrified him. Made him want to run back up the ramp, dive into the event horizon and let it shut on his sorry ass.

He glanced down, avoiding Daniel's gaze, evading this other, far more frightening knowing. He saw the slight tremour in Daniel's hands that belied his wide grin and knew that he wasn't the only one who was afraid. It was enough. He walked down into their smiles, their arms, but felt only Daniel's touch.

Later, much later, stopping by Daniel's office with a well-rehearsed impromptu offer of Thai and music and special occasion scotch, he caught the flicker of expression, the almost smile, and realized that just as he could still see Daniel, Daniel could still hear him. There was no fallen city between them, no broken tower. Everything, text and subtext, was laid bare between them and he wanted to run away almost as much as he wanted to run to.

Almost.

Small talk filled the middle distance, the wait for take-out, the careful choosing of a video neither of them would watch. They picked one they'd seen before and liked, so they could talk about easily, knowingly, if they needed to. He watched Daniel's smile, the sudden flash of teeth, the sweetness and the tartness of it. He took the video from Daniel to rent in his name, only because he wanted their fingers to touch.

To bridge.

Daniel's first kiss was sweet, clumsy. Out of practice. Daniel was used to being kissed, not kissing, and it made it all the better, Jack thought, a little dazed. To make someone want _that_ much. It made him dizzy, just a little. Soon enough Daniel's kisses became wet and raunchy and demanding. Jack savoured the taste of cumin and ginger and lime that underlay the flavour of Daniel, who opened his mouth wide and swallowed Jack down with almost avaricious intensity. 

In between Daniel talked, and he should have known that Daniel would talk at a time like this, broken gasps about hanging gardens and vain kings and stairways to heaven and Jack let the words wash over him, soak into his skin with each kiss and bite and slow, swirling lick. He tongued the whorls of Daniel's ears, the ones that heard him even when he had nothing to say, even when there were no words at all. He kissed each eye in turn, saw himself reflected in the wide, dark pupils; he liked what he saw.

It was not everything it should be, it was too fast and too messy and full of fumbles and gasps and little bruisings.

It was perfect.

And so, in the middle of the night, Jack lay awake and watched Daniel sleep. In the grey quiet he tried to unravel all that was said and unsaid between them, to twist apart the small catches and loops that might ultimately undo them. But...there was no point, really. This was...and it was enough. It had to be, because it was so much more than what most others had.

To be heard.

To be known, and still loved.

Jack lay his head down on Daniel's chest, listened to his heart mark out the minutes like a well-wound watch. He listened until the grey light was edged with gold and then he slept.

An End


End file.
